Trust is raising awareness of deadly disease

An NHS trust is raising awareness of a deadly disease which kills more people than bowel, breast and prostate cancer combined.

United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust (ULHT) launched a campaign this month to raise awareness of sepsis, which affects 150,000 people in the UK every year, causing 44,000 deaths.

It is the body’s reaction to an infection and means that the body attacks its own organs and tissues.

It can lead to shock, multiple organ failure and death, especially if it is not recognized early and treated promptly.

Sepsis can be caused by a variety of different bugs, and in most cases by common bacteria. Sometimes the body responds abnormally to these infections.

A ULHT spokesman said: “Sepsis does not discriminate between age or gender and patients and health workers need to work together to ensure life-saving treatment is given as soon as possible.”

The campaign has already seen staff holding cake sales, attending a talk from a sepsis survivor and a conference.

The trust is helping to support the UK Sepsis Trust in its fight towards saving a target of 14,000 lives every year through increasing awareness, improving quality of care and reducing mortality rates.

The trust’s quality governance team is now working with staff across all hospital areas to emphasise the importance of ‘sepsis 6’ – a national set of steps taken to help reduce the number of deaths in patients from sepsis.